Between grief and joy

Elizabeth Foss

3/23/16

I'm in a precarious position as I write this column. It is
the Friday before Palm Sunday. We are but a few days from
Holy Week. This column will be published on Holy Thursday,
just as the most somber days of the year begin. Three days
later, it will be Easter, the most jubilant day of the year.

As I write, my husband's mother hangs on to the faintest
whisper of life. Before I hit "send," she could be gone.

When will you read this? In the silence of Good Friday
afternoon, or Easter Monday, as you catch your breath after a
day of joyous celebration? The line is so fine this week of
the liturgical year: life and death, grief and joy, fear and
hope.

Faith finds us there, along that fine line. Faith - like a
muscle that is stretched and stressed and, please God,
strengthened in the moments of grief - carries us from the
grief to the joy, from the fear to the hope. There on the
death side of the fine line, though, waiting and hoping to
hope in joy, we are brokenhearted. It is the person of Jesus
who sits with us in Gethsemane, who weeps with us at the
tomb, who gives us reason to rejoice on the glorious morning
of new life.

We hear the promise in the dark of night: The Lord is close
to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit (Ps
34:18). Deep grief changes lives. Deep grief tests souls by
stretching taut against every good thing we've ever believed
and straining against the faith we've always taken for
granted. Under the weight of sadness, hearts bow and souls
cry out in despair. The question is whether we cry out to the
Lord who has taken all of our grief upon His own shoulders.
Will we let Him come close to our broken hearts? Curled up
tightly, defensive against the pain, we are tempted like
never before to shut Him out, disbelieving that any good God
would allow the dark of a Friday on Calvary. Will we exercise
our faith and let it grow in the pain? Will we test it and
find that God truly is good, all the time, even on the grief
side of the fine line? Will we believe in the triumph of
Easter morning?

Cellophane Easter grass strewn across the living room floor
and half-eaten chocolate bunnies are the stuff of Sunday
afternoon. But Easter, true Easter, lives most gloriously in
the soul of the person who has wrestled grief and the doubt
it sows in one's faith and lived to know that Jesus is real.
We have to make the first move, however tentative it is. We
have to reach for Jesus and ask Him to walk along the fine
line. Part of growing in faith is making a decision to
believe and to be vulnerable in belief. Strengthening faith
means living on the grief side of the fine line and deciding
that we trust God's plan and, further, that we want Him to be
our safe place. We want Him to take us to the other side, the
joy side. Slowly, we unfurl from our defensive posture and
let our souls inhale grace.

Foss, whose website is elizabethfoss.com, is a freelance
writer from Northern Virginia.